CMBS Pro Formas Return

Here a Financial Times Alphaville blog post on the re-emergence of loan underwriting based on pro forma financial data rather than historical figures.  In the 2000s most loans in CMBS were based on pro forma underwriting.  Here is a strong quote from the post:

In market terms, pro-forma underwriting is the practice of basing future property cashflows on estimates rather than historical income streams. In non-jargon, it often means picking numbers out of thin air and basing your valuations on them. Even the rating agencies are pretty down on the method. Moody’s says that “almost always pro-forma underwriting is a negative for credit quality."

Anyway, recent concerns seem to stem from this report from Barclays Capital:

Although CMBS 2.0 deals so far are nowhere close to 2007 vintage in terms of pro-forma underwriting, we start seeing isolated examples where some loans were underwritten using forward looking assumptions … Historically, clean underwriting was traditionally based on the most recent 12-month trailing financials. However, we see that a significant number of loans in CMBS 2.0 were underwritten 1) either significantly higher than 12-month trailing; or 2) historical numbers were not quoted in Annex A, making such comparison impossible. In many instances the lack of historical operating performance was in those cases where relatively new construction (assets built or substantially remodeled within the prior three years and even not fully stabilized) was securitized. In addition, for the recently acquired properties, historical financials might be not available or are just considered less reliable, as the sponsorship changed. Based on our analysis, the combination of these two factors explains most of the instances where the historical financials were missing … On average, about 18% of all CMBS 2.0 loans did not have historical NOIs [net operating income] …

Hard to tell whether this is a trend or a few anomalies, but it did not take long for old habits to reappear.